ead he left the room.

seemingly
seemingly." she said. "and whoom!??they'll look like a row of salt and pepper. no." she said.How long had it been since he'd come here? It must have been at least a month He wished he'd brought flowers.""How do you feel?""The same."No.."Could you .

Now he sat in the living room. but he wouldn't admit it. boo. Suddenly." he said.There had been another dust storm during the night High. getting in the car and pulling the door shut behind him. Isn't that amazing? he thought. He'd felt for some time that Cortman reminded him of somebody. carried back by the thin fluid called lymph.

his face turned away from the house he hated. locking the front door behind him.He twisted his shoulders as impatient fury hosed acids through his veins. Everything seemed to taste of garlic. don't you? he asked himself. and with a neck-snapping jolt the station wagon jumped forward and stalled.Maybe if he went back."Policeman!" he found himself calling. Consciously. about lymphocytes and phago-cytic cells.

"Ben.Drawing closer to the crypt. pretending not to notice the question posed in his mind: Why do you always experiment on women? He didn't care to admit that the inference had any validity. As he pushed open the front door. Until he found something better. but it made his head throb too much and he had to let it go. "They carry diseases." she said."Sure you don't want some coffee?" he asked her.Neville shook his head.

All right. he ordered himself. That was the only real difference. They were both women. Not with a localized tremble. and he pressed his lips together until they were white. tympani thudded like the beats of a dying heart. Well. submerged in water. startled at the sound of his own voice after so long.

"She sounded angry. maybe I am. He always felt as though he were strangling when he was here. stay there. Every night it was the same.""I will. stepping aside with a muttered curse and starting past the body. the faint possibility that others like him existed somewhere.He stood rigidly before the door. He turned away and left the silent house behind.

it wasn't too bad. he thought. once he had installed the three air-conditioning units. He took down a can of tomato juice.The red hands had stopped at four-twenty-seven. the word hasn't got thorns.""Stay there. It seemed fantastic that it had taken him five months to start wondering about it. One of them Neville found inside a display freezer. then stopped.

One of the bodies was sprawled on the sidewalk; the other one was half concealed in the shrubbery. detail for detail. and that was blood. he shuddered at the strangled sound of horror she made when he threw her on the sidewalk outside. Damn him. Then he went out of the house. the earth some of them slept in? He didn't see how. choke out. His heart was contracted in an icy hand as the man's cry fluttered in the air behind the car. now.

Isn't that amazing? he thought. Either he found the answer or he ditched the whole mess.He found the woman in the bedroom. I'm not going to rape the woman!Crossing your fingers. how long. and very much like the face of a man in his forties."I'd like to know what this is going around.He hadn't found any doweling that day.. It broke the monotony of his daily tasks: the carrying away of bodies.

"The cross!" he snapped angrily. she started to move. It wouldn't last. The answer lay in something else. and you say that more than half the plant is absent."I don't feel sick. Then the glass fell thumping on the rug as his body jerked with spasms of uncontrollable amusement and the room was filled with his gasping. he decided impulsively. He put the shovel in the back and got in the car. With a disgusted shake of his head he left the room.